‘So what, Clara likes the way my shirt smells? That’s no big deal. I’ll leave you my cologne, and then you can test it out, see if that works,’ Sebastian says, ‘but that doesn’t explain why she has these nightmares. Did something happen to her during her childhood? Did she…,’ He didn’t want to ask, it was the toughest question he was going to ask in his life, but he had to, ‘Did she get... raped? Abused?’ Sebastian asked as he ran his fingers through his hair. He worried. Getting abused was not something he knew anything about, and he might not handle it right. ‘Am I even equipped to help her with that?’ He wondered. ‘We do not know the answer to your last two questions because even Clara does not know what happened to her before she got to the orphanage. Her experience repressed her memories that she only gets snippets of information at a time. Sometimes th

‘Well, we were thinking about how to go about that. Instead of a mandatory drug test, which might open a can of worms, something you might not be prepared to deal with. I was thinking of getting DNA from Celine,’ Jere suggests. ‘Maybe one of us can visit her and get some samples. You can do a paternity test on siblings, right?’  ‘Well, I think it’s time I think I went on a date, don’t you think? She might be older than me, but maybe I can charm her and get a few strands of her hair,‘ he said, staring at Max, trying to bait him. Jere had been tracking Max for the past two months, only because he’s been disappearing more than usual, and he found from their bank records Max had been flying to San Diego every Friday night for the past nine weeks. He had a hunch that he was visiting Celine, but he was not sure. He wanted his brother to tell them himself.

‘Okay, fine, I’m scared. What if I’m not what you expect? What if I don’t know what I’m doing?’ Clara said cryptically. ‘How am I going to tell him I’m bad at relationships, maybe even sex? Wasn’t that the reason all my exes left me? I couldn’t satisfy their needs. What if I forgot how to do it? I can’t learn that on the internet, right, or maybe I could?’ Clara thought as her mind raced, finding reasons to push him away. ‘What do you mean? In terms of relationships? You think I know what I’m doing?’ Sebastian asks, amused that she was worried about such trivial things. He just wanted to wrap her in his arms and hide her forever. ‘Don’t you think I’m scared, too? What if I let you down? What if I’m not handsome enough for you,’ he jokes, trying to keep things light, ‘What if I can’t see you all the time? Will you grow t

As Heather took her seat in front of Jeremy’s office, she contemplated her relationship with Clara. That remark about being there for her graduation really meant a lot to her. Sure, they’ve known each other for ten years now, ever since Heather was in high school, but aside from the night she crashed at their place, they’ve never talked about anything else. It baffled her why Clara even liked her. ‘I’m just another employee. Why should she care about me?’ she wondered. Maybe it had something to do with Jeremy because Clara knew Heather was in love with him.  Now that her graduation was in sight, she was officially his secretary. The trip to San Diego for the installation got her excited. It was her chance to get closer to Jeremy. Not that working for him didn’t give her a lot of opportunities, but with her boss sit

The next time Clara heard from Sebastian was when he was on the news addressing the media and everyone else who got hurt. They were still pulling out survivors by the time her plane took off. She texted him, asking him where he was because she wanted to be sure that he would be at the office when her plane landed. She didn’t really know where his house was, so that would have been a disaster if she had to ask him for directions. But she took Lexi’s cell just in case she needed to ask for it later. On the plane, Clara did not notice that Max was on the same flight, sitting a few seats behind her, wearing a baseball cap he had bought at the airport when he spotted her. He boarded the plane ahead of her and was now crouched down in his seat so she wouldn’t see him.  She had the habit of looking at people when she was flying. It was her way of knowing the pe